Theories of Natural Classes:

Correct theory of the state of affairs:

1. Natural classes as primitive:
a. The existence of natural classes, with their different degrees of naturalness, is a
primitive, not further explicable, fact.
i. The view was first formulated by Anthony Quinton in the article in which he
formulated the natural class problem.
ii. It is a Nominalist theory, involving tokens, classes of tokens (which are also
particulars), though it does involve a property of certain classes, a property of
naturalness that admits of degrees.
2. Resemblance Nominalism: (against Quinton)
a. You may think that it should be possible to explain what a natural class is, to
penetrate into its structure. But if at the same time you do not like universals, that is,
if you want to remain a Nominalist, then the thing to do is to analyze the notion of a
natural class using the relation of resemblance.
b. Natural classes are identified with classes of individuals where certain relations of
resemblance hold between the individuals, thus making the class into a natural class.
c. Resemblance, on this view, has to be taken as something objectively there in the
world.
o There is one traditional analysis of resemblance need to be rejected:
 The view that when things resemble, then they always have something in
common, something strictly the same, identical in the strict sense. This
traditional analysis is summed up in a slogan: All resemblance is partial
identity.
 ^ rejected by the Resemblance Nominalist.
o To speak of identity between the resembling things is to go
over into a Universals theory.
o In Resemblance Nominalism, on the contrary, instead of the
naturalness of classes being taken as primitive, the
resemblance of the members is taken as primitive. (Although
resemblance is permitted to have degrees.)
o Primitive resemblance is the unifier of the natural class.
o One philosopher who puts forward a worked out
Resemblance Nominalism is the English philosopher H. H.
Price (1953, Ch.1).

3. Universals
4. Natural classes of tropes
a. The Natural Class theory and the Resemblance theory do not admit properties and
relations at the ground floor of their analyses.
 They face the problem of giving an account of our easy and natural talk about
the properties and relations of things, yet using in the account only
nonuniversals.
 The Realist admits properties and relations but holds that they are universals.
 This suggests an interesting nominalist compromise.
o Admit properties and relations, but make them into
particulars.
 Of two billiard balls, let each have its own color,
shade, mass, and so forth. If the balls are in contact
on the table, and two others are at the other end of
the table, let each pair have its own relations of
adjacency.
  Following the U.S. philosopher, Donald C. Williams, we can call
properties and relations conceived of as particulars tropes.
 This stand does not solve the Problem of Universals, but it does allow the
problem to be posed anew.
 Consider all the red things. On the trope theory the redness of each
thing is a distinct trope. But then we have to face the question, Why
do we say that all red tropes have the same color? The identity is not
strict identity. So what unifies the class of all rednesses?
o Three answers stand out once again:
 1. The natural class answer: The individual rednesses
form a closely unified natural class and that is all that
can be said.
 This nominalist view was put forward by G.
F. Stout. He said that the class of the
rednesses have a “distributive unity.” It is a
trope version of Quinton’s view that natural
classes are primitive. But we will se later
that the trope version is in many ways quite
a new game (and a superior one).
 2. Resemblance classes of tropes answer: Another
way of uniting classes of tropes is to appeal, as a
primitive, to the relation of resemblance, but now
between tropes, not ordinary things: Individual
rednesses resemble each other to a greater or lesser
degree.
 This form of Resemblance Nominalism was
upheld by Donald Williams. I am inclined to
think that it is the most plausible of all forms
of Nominalism. It is a very moderate form of
Nominalism, just as the Realism I will
defend later is a rather moderate form of
Realism
 3. Tropes plus universals: Finally, one might seek to
unify the class of rednesses, say, in a realist manner.
Each particular redness, each trope, instantiates the
single universal.
 This view has been held by some good
philosophers, for instance, the Oxford
philosopher J. Cook Wilson. It may even
have been Aristotle’s view. But I think it is
of less interest than the first five positions.
Once one has accepted universals, the tropes
seem to become redundant (or vice versa).
This
principle of method, which may be summed up by saying that
entities are not to be postulated without necessity, is known as
Occam's razor, after the medieval philosopher William of
Occam, although this formulation is not actually found in his
works. Philosophers will often be found appealing to the
principle, particularly philosophers with empiricist or
reductionist sympathies.
For this reason I will pay a certain amount of attention to
how economical or uneconomical various theories are. Other
things being equal, I shall account the more economical theory
the better theory. A final section in each chapter will be
addressed to giving a list of the fundamental entities and
principles required by the theory examined in that chapter.